


When The Morphine's Gone

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: No Country for Old Men (2007)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Home surgery, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 05:06:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11936925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: Anonymous asked: I feel bad piling this on top of your already massive To-Do list but can I sneak in a request for some Anton Chigurh?? I cannot write for him to save my life but I trust you beyond measure to come up with something amazing.A/N: No Country for Old Men is probably my favorite Cohen film, which says a lot because I love nearly all of their movies to the point of obsession. I can't say if I did Anton any justice here, but hopefully he's measurably believable. Thanks for the request! <3See tags for warnings.





	When The Morphine's Gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous/gifts).



A wolf or dog - some… thing with matted fur and a nasty disposition was at her heels. It snapped at her ankles, taking off skin like a metal peeler on wilted potato skins. Strings of bacteria-laced saliva hung down in thick ropes from its yellowed teeth - teeth which stood out from a mess of black hairs and wild golden eyes. 

It was the same nightmare, running a loop for a month now and yet even now, as she ran and ran and ran, she didn't know the difference between this and reality. 

Sprays of hot blood and rabid spit painted her calves and just as those dull, snapping fangs hooked into the meat of her calf muscle…

… the phone rang. 

She snapped awake like some terrified damsel out of the Twilight Zone, drenched in sweat with tears in her eyes, gasping for breath. A stray hiccup caught in her throat, but it was okay. She was awake. Everything was alright. Just a nightmare - she'd just had another nightmare. Shouldn't have fallen asleep during the day. 

They were always worse during the day. 

In the curtain-dampened light of her room, the phone continued ringing. Against the back wall, beside the bed frame, Mrs. Krakowski from the unit beside her, slapped her can. She screamed nasally, ‘answer the damn phone, April!’ but April’s head was still half filled with sleep. 

She stumbled for the phone, fumbled for it too long-spun in the haze and received another loud scream through the cheap plaster wall, “Answer the fucking phone!!”

April’s thumb caught on the receiver. 

With a frog in her throat, she asked the wrong end of the phone, “... yeah, who is it?”

For a second there was silence, and then a long, rattling breath through the line pulled up fading fear from a nightmare not old enough to ignore. April blinked, elbow pulling in a knee jerk reaction to hang up the receiver in terror when a very male and very baritone voice asked her, ‘What is your location?’ 

Quickly, heart thrust up behind her tonsils, she flipped the phone and held her breath. There was a strain in his voice and vulnerability, and April felt another layer of sweat leak out of her pores. She wasn't prepared for this… the heat was draining her dry, and she didn't have-

‘Give me the address, or I'll find someone else, it's that simple.’ A threat and a calculated, almost mild one at that. One more complaint to ‘management’ and that was it, she’d work at the diner for the rest of her short, miserable life. With eyes on her back. Life even more pointless than the day preceding it. 

April couldn't do this, not today. She wanted one day to wallow in self-pity and old memories of things that could have been but weren't.

Not now. Please...

“... shit,” she whispered, running her nails up through her tangled hair, searching the floral pattern on her bedspread for some semblance of advice but found none. She was ill prepared for this, as she had been for most things in her life and how fitting that she'd get a call today of all days after a month without this baggage.

“Look, I'm out of morphine,” she told him through the phone, holding her temple in one palm, “Unless this is serious-”

‘We wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't.’

“-then you need to bring your own or a fucking mallet cause I can't have you conscious. If the neighbors hear any more screaming, I'll have more problems than I do right now."

Silence came through on the other end. She visualized her supply box, stuffed in her bathroom in the linen closet and gulped thickly, "All I've got is lidocaine and a few quaaludes... but those kick in slow and they don't work on pain. Best case scenario they make you pass out. How many bullets are we talking-

‘What's your location?’

April swung her head, knocked her knuckles against her temple and flung her legs over the bed. The soft touch of shag carpet between her toes didn't provide any comfort as her eyes darted around the dim room. She huffed into the receiver, unaware of the type of person she was dealing with and uncaring considering how it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. If he killed her, what difference did it actually make? Still, some steps needed to be taken before she blurted out her physical address. 

“Who gave you this number?” She asked, running through the short checklist in her head as skinny orange light from the outside world fluttered along her floor, just barely tickling her toes with warmth.

Another moment of silence. 

April could almost hear the click of teeth tightening - of a difficult, steadying breath and the name, ‘Newman’ on waves of pain. He sounded like he may still be in shock. That wouldn't last and knowing her luck, his endorphins would wear off just as she opened the door for him. The Krakowski's were going to get her evicted if this kept up... then again, that too didn't matter, did it?

Her eyes fluttered to the unopened mail on her bedside table, resting under a loaded Winchester. Sighing, she asked Newman’s pass phrase, “Where do the chickens go home to roost?”

‘East,’ he echoed gently, exhaling as if through pursed lips and then, a little less composed, ‘with the rest of the gooks…”

With no other option, no choice but to concede, she gave him her address; turn by turn directions and told him to look for a rust-red Ford pickup out in the driveway. He hung up on her before she could have the pleasure to do so on him. The joy, maybe if she continued with the sour mood, would be when he cracked under the tweezers - when he screamed and cried. Maybe then, she'd feel a little less like dying tomorrow as opposed to today.

Twenty minutes, he'd told her; breath laborious within the phone. All she needed was ten minutes to get everything ready and another three to make herself a stiff drink.

April sprayed her kitchen table down with alcohol water, scrubbed the stains from last night's dinner with a bristle pad and ripped open a sterile hospital blanket, resting it with a snap over the surface like a macabre tablecloth. Getting everything ready was almost cathartic, better than the shot of chilled vodka burning a hole in her stomach. 

Even slicing the edges of the blanket with latch holes, hooking the openings onto the nails hammered into the table legs, was calming. It may have been enough of a pallet cleanser to negate the valium she shoved underneath her tongue, but it wouldn't hurt to have an extra agent chilling the anxiety. Without an even temper, she'd say something shitty and get clocked in the face again. April skimmed her fingers under the black eye that still lingered from last time and swallowed back the valium paste with a grimace.

The booze was turning her gut and if anything it had only wet her dread of the unknown. It had been easier overseas - those men hadn't had time to let realization sink in, or they were too far gone for her efforts anyhow. They certainly weren't offended if she cursed or yelled at them. A soldier's mentality had too much to focus on other than her nasty disposition or whether it was appropriate or not.

"Bunch of fuckers," she mumbled, wincing under her own prodding fingers.

Every man reacted differently to pain… and without a supply of morphine, the threat of getting clawed in the face or jabbed was higher than usual, whether she had a smile on her face or not. This black eye was still healing; yellow, and purple speckled under the rim. April couldn't afford another one.

Her doorbell rang as she was prepping the lidocaine - the plastic cap shoved between her teeth with the clear, small bottle raised over head. 

“One second!” She shouted around a stiff jaw at the door, laying the syringes in a neat little line on a pulley table where she’d placed bottles of betadine, sterile water, and an oblong stainless steel bowl, filled with a stitch kit, packaged tweezers, and sterile instruments. 

The man on the other end of the door fisted the wood. One solid knock, loud enough to make her jerk, heart pulling her ribs open. The Krakowski’s were going call the cops on her for sure. The coppers would come with a warrant, and she'd have a bigger set of worries than rotting in jail with a tumor eating away at her brain. 

April flicked on the record player, filling her apartment with the relaxing orchestra of Chopin, as she unlatched her front door. 

The music would muffle the grunts and moans and maybe soothe the anger seething through the walls. It was better than being labeled a crazy whore, at least officially by her neighbors. 

If she'd known what she'd find just beyond the fake safety of that door and what her future would hold, she maybe have gone back to the nightmares. April might have taken the Winchester and blown her brains out just so life didn't hurt when it was over. But, as with every outcome in her life, she'd made the choice, and so her future was set in stone as the door creaked open.

A wreck - bloodied and annoyed - stared down at her with cold black eyes and leveled shoulders. His mouth thinned at the sight of her, twitched and tugged at crusty blood around a weeping slit just inside the wet edge of his lower lip. 

April took him in as quick and efficient as she always did - a ruddy assessment back when there were seconds on the line instead of the hours she still hadn't gotten used to. His hair reached down under his ears, matted with blood and those eyes… wide and frenzied with pain even though his chest rose evenly; proof of some semblance of composure. Though blood ran from one of his nostrils, the ridge didn't look broken.

His pupils weren't blown, which meant he hadn't taken any opiates - a decision he'll come to regret later, she thought almost viciously. Could still be in shock, but unlikely. No, this one was the type that thought they could grunt their way through the pain. It was those kinds of men she hated the most - the ones that always made the most noise... got her in the most trouble too.

She studied his posture, settling her gaze on the murky brown stains soaked into the checkered shirt around his neck and slung under an arm. 

Bone - exposed and snapped - caught the light from her wall sconce. 

"Shit," she cursed at the sight of it.

This one wasn't the usual ‘bullet wound’ walker she usually dealt with… this one had a compound fracture nasty enough to make her feel the vodka/valium juice rise up in her throat. A man with that kind of snap shouldn't be standing... at least not as unwavering as he was now.

“I'm just an ex-field nurse,” she admitted, reeling there in her doorway. He grunted like a wild bear, toed his way forward and without a single iota of resistance, she opened up her home to him. April swallowed down stomach bile and urged him in even though there was no way she could splint that arm without morphine - no way he wouldn't scream if she tried.

Despite cutting her eyes to her kitchen, the man remained in the entryway, surveying her apartment from corner to corner, surface to surface. Finding the exits, choke spots and static weaponry, she realized. 

April knew the type, not well, but working with vets gave one a better eye for catching the mannerisms - that edge of distrust they had for the rest of the world. He didn't look like a smuggler either. No. This one was a company cleaner. 

A dog. A beast on a leash. A wolf on her heels...

His eyes finished their survey, observing her slight form as if he had all the time in the world - as if his ulna wasn't taking in air… as if he’d already pushed the pain down awhile ago. He acted as if the protruding bone didn't exist but to inconvenience him. The only drug she knew of that could do that was ketamine, but men didn't walk around while that stuff was coursing through their veins. The way he stood studiously in her home reminded April of yogis not druggies. Mind over matter... natural highs.

She watched him breathe and resented him for it.

A rivulet of sweat ran down the side of his temple, belying the pain he kept well hidden - the sight of it lessened some of her spitefulness. The perspiration pulled away pink flecks of the dried blood painting half his face, slipping along a bulging tendon until it wetted the makeshift splint. 

Under his critical gaze, her bruised eye pulsed. He took in her wounded cavity and finally, after what felt like an eternity, stepped forward.

April couldn't help herself, she took a shaken step back, lifting her hands to her stomach as if to shield the vulnerable cushion of organs from his claws. 

Just old nightmares, she thought. He was wounded and large, and she was small and quick, always had been. If he tried anything, she could grab the Winchester on her nightstand and blow his damn head off faster than he could round on her. 

He didn't step closer, just watched her in the midst of her panic while blood dribbled thickly off his saturated elbow.

It felt like that night in September eight years ago - the night when the cache blew on the convoy, taking out two of her nursing colleagues and sparing the rest of them for future disease and lawsuits. That night she'd been walking in a waking nightmare, feeling both numb and overly sensitive to the point where the air felt like napalm. It was a panic attack... but April took a shoddy breath and knew it wouldn't last past the working valium. A few more minutes and she'll be calm again. Just a little longer...

“Where is your bathroom?” He asked evenly.

It took her a fat second to gather herself. The sound of his voice was somehow wetter, more muffled and throat-clogged in person than it had been on the phone. He enunciated like he was talking through a smoke funnel - like an ominous call in a damp forest fire. 

April shook herself, hurrying past him to the hallway, “This-this way. You're gonna need those quaaludes… I’ll get you a glass of water, and I'm not promising any-”

He moved against her, as though to make it the rest of the way to her open bathroom by himself but stumbled, pinning her against the hallway wall. She jerked in surprise, accidentally elbowing his chest and the broken arm. Panic pulled the vodka acid back up her throat; stained her tonsils at the wild-eyed pain surrounding those black eyes. 

Hot, damp breath that smelt like sour milk and blood, grunted down the front of her face. 

He was sweating buckets; pale with green around the gills. When he went down to a knee, there was nothing she could do but try and steer him so he fell in a heap against the wall, slumped over his crumpled legs and not flat on his face.

April looked at him with a bewildered expression. She'd given him too much credit earlier. It was evident now how much pain he was in.

“I'm sorry, I just... this isn't the day for this shit,” she chewed the words around like coca leaves; hoping the swearing might make her feel less like vomiting, but it didn't help. He didn't reply, just watched the floor, panting weakly.

She left him there on the floor, hip jabbing the bathroom door where it smacked back along the tile wall on her frenzied quest for her pill bottle and the amyl nitrates. Through the open door, April could hear him swallowing breathes past his teeth, sounding like a muzzled dog… or a wolf…

Her toothbrushes went in the sink, leaving the holder cup empty until she floundered with the tap and gushed it half full of water. 

“Up,” she told him, hitting her knees on the floor - straddling his jean-clad thigh - as a wave of tap water splashed over his clothes. 

He stared, eyes enormous and teeth bared like some savage animal until she thumbed the cap of the poppers and shoved the opening under his blood-crusted nostril. 

“Inhale,” she demanded. 

Either from pain or her words, he did as she asked. The bottle popped and there he was, back in his skin with blown pupils just long enough for her to lift two round loods to his mouth. Realization painted the sweaty features that flexed in pain - he recognized them, and from that one look, she knew he’d prefer conscious suffering, but he took them anyway. 

This one was strong, but he wasn't stupid either. He knew his limits, and whether his parted mouth was a sign of trust or the realization that he had little other choices, it didn't matter in the end. 

April fed the two quaaludes to him, tipping the warm water past his lips; rivulets running down the jowls of his face and as if by some great upheaval, he swallowed them down.

Crushed opiates would have been better… fewer side effects but with this type of pain, anything was better than nothing. At least loods kicked in quicker than other barbiturates. Sedation was better than nothing, but it meant her evening would be further filled with blood and sweat and maybe even into the following morning. At least he hadn't shit himself. 

Well, she looked him over as his eyes squinted instead of closing, he hadn't shit himself yet, she thought almost ruefully. 

Perhaps luck wasn't so fleeting. Besides, that valium was starting to soak in.

April sank back over his thigh, unconcerned with the contact despite it being inappropriately too familiar and half-sexualized. The man barely acknowledged her anyway, all but a single muscle twitch under the cleft of her ass and then nothing. In the quiet, she closed her eyes, letting her thoughts run aimlessly while her drugs kicked in. His leg twitched again and her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth, stifling a gentle sound of something that could have been called pleasure in another setting.

“... if you can wait until morning, there's a chance I can get you some ketamine. You'll be awake and aware, no pain and it wears off quick,” she told him, eyes still closed as long as his breathing was haggard enough she knew he wouldn't jostle his fracture just to hit her.

The silence opened her eyes back up to his twisted appearance. His throat bobbed, swallowing thickly before he parted his lips, breaking the red line of moist blood swimming behind his teeth, “I have business that can't wait until then.”

April eyed him critically, watching the way his pupils dilated as he looked up and down the hallway, catching the darkness to the right and the flooding light from the kitchen to the left. Mild concussion, she decided, feeling less confident about feeding him those loods and more useless for not checking beforehand. 

“I get it,” she told him, watching the way he side-eyed her underneath his pinched brow line, “... do you think I can get you to the kitchen. Quicker we snap that back in place the quicker you can get the fuck out of here.”

“Just don't touch me,” he warned, twisting his ankle until the muscle underneath her jumped, coaxing something wholly unwarranted between her thighs. She ignored it quickly, standing up and taking several steps back to give him his space. She watched, scrutinizing his posture and expression for any hidden injuries as he braced his shoulders against the wall - boots jabbed into the bottom trim - and walked himself up to his feet. It was slow, and sympathetic pain started itching in her elbows as she watched him.

Bruised ribs maybe, but no internal bleeding as far as she could tell. The rapid blinking she witnessed confirmed the concussion, but aside from the arm, it seemed whatever he got himself into was mild. Car wreck would be her best guess. If he'd lost a fight, there'd be more damage to his face. 

Blunt force trauma wasn't uncommon for her to deal with, but April had gotten used to digging out shrapnel and slugs. It was easy, and it was quick, and even when she had to cut deep to pull the grit out, the slices were clean and the stitches simple. 

There was nothing simple about this. 

Bone was hard, and while it'd taken a significant amount of force to snap it - it also took a great force to set it, and she was short and thin and weaker than he possibly needed her to be. 

“Kitchen table, please,” she told him, following close enough to offer a futile hand if he needed it, but not close enough to break that personal barrier he'd requested.

He sat on her table; looking across the room with a hooded appearance. 

“May I?” April asked, lifting her palms beside his side in gesture. His confirmation was a steadied chin tip and so, holding her tongue between her teeth, she went over his ribs and spine with thumbs in varied pressure, looking for anything else before pain became a singular sensation for him. 

It'd be useless doing an exam after tending to his ulna. Nothing else would hurt after that… except for the arm of course and maybe his male pride if he cared about it. 

“How's your breathing? - does it hurt-”

“It doesn’t,” he replied; abrupt but sedated. 

The loods were kicking in, but with a man of his size and breadth, April didn’t think they’d do much but relax him. Quaaludes had a habit of kicking in hard and fast, but after the first couple of hours, they lost their luster quickly. Perfect for what she had to do, but eight hundred milligrams, while being enough to put down an average sized person, wouldn’t act as any more than a fat valium for someone like him.

Despite what she’d feared, he was a model patient. The man didn’t insult her like others had - listened and responded truthfully and without much impatience. For someone that had an arm as busted as his, he took the time to be respectful while she checked him over for fractures and internal injuries. There was a first for everything, April thought. 

He sucked in a raw breath when she stroked down his thighs, twisting his calves and ankles to check for sprains, but he was a man, and that was normal. If he reacted like most she'd treated, his blood pressure might give him an erection, but she knew how to ignore those and if not ignore, then make light of it at the very least.

April thought nothing of the lazy way his eyes fell down to the open collar on her button down, mainly because the gaze didn’t last long and he made no move to do it again, or touch her for that matter. 

Model patient, she thought again, looking to the sling he’d made for his left arm. 

“How do you feel?” She asked, focusing on the expansion of his pupils, “... loods kicking in hard enough? I have some valium I can crush up and throw in some water for you before we do this if you’d prefer.”

“No,” he responded, sounding distant but still there - still too conscious for her liking - and continued, “Do you have something for my teeth? I'm running late - need to be over the river by morning.”

In Mexico, she noted, fiddling one handed with her belt buckle as his eyes crinkled and expanded; darting minutely back and forth between her chin and hips. Before things like this, she usually got a name, but for some reason, April felt it best not knowing. There was an aroma of danger on him not familiar to the others under her ‘care.' Without a name, he was just another man in need of mending… unmemorable and readily forgotten. 

His eyes followed the movement of her fingers as she wrung the plain leather belt from her shorts, cinched about her waist.

April had a leather bite in her laundry room, but there were stains of blood from the last one still on it, and after the first migraine and the following scans, she hadn't bothered to clean it, thinking there'd be no point.

With the belt wrapped around her knuckles, she spared her hallway a lingering look, thinking to the letter unopened on her nightstand and cracked the leather softly.

As if he'd done this before, maybe by himself or with someone like her, he opened his mouth, accepted the folded leather and bit down until the taut sound of animal hide crackled and the sharp edge of his canines sunk deep. April swallowed and began to cut the blood-heavy sling off him. 

His shirt came away is sticky layers, revealing sun-toasted skin and blood matted chest hair. He was dense with muscle and a thin layer of protective fat that wrinkled the skin around his navel. The bulk of him was impressive, but April didn't stare. A shirtless man was par for the course in this line of ‘work, ’ and she'd seen her fair share of naked, bloody men overseas - one or two more impressive looking than him... maybe... 

He stayed quiet as she tugged the scraps of his shirt over his broad shoulders, mindful enough not to tug unnecessarily at his broken arm. At one point her thumb grazed the crotch of his jeans while threading the last piece of polyester from his waist and still, he didn't do more than twitch. 

Alcohol water, doused over the break, barely got more than a grunt out of him either and April knew how much it had to hurt. It'd be nothing compared to what she'd have to do next, but it was still wholly unnatural for a man in this state to remain so… outside himself. Maybe it was the loods, some people felt more detached from themselves than others. Barbiturates affected everyone slightly differently, hence the different kind on the market. Variations in the number of neurotransmitters the drug blocked wouldn't account for this level of calm, though - not with the low milligram she gave him. Whoever he was, he wasn't like any others she'd dealt with.

It was unnatural the lack of noise he made. 

She tossed the bloodied fabric on the floor, surveying the wet bone and gash while snapping on a pair of sterile gloves. 

He took the multiple pinch-injections of lidocaine well, even if the both of them knew how little it would do when it came to the nerve pain he was about to experience.

His ulna was protruding from the meat of his longus muscles, tugging at shredded fibers and wept a steady stream of thin blood and yet… he merely exhaled when she took hold of him. 

Buckets of sweat poured off him, and all the pain he didn't voice came through the lines on his face and those eyes - those bestial eyes that mimicked the snapping wolves. Of course, it hurt - of course it would, and it did, and April didn't pause to give him a break. He had business after all, and she had more time to reminisce about all her 'what could have beens.' 

“Take a breath,” she whispered, feeling oddly faint herself as she braced between his open thighs; hands spaced at his forearm and elbow respectively.

His chest expanded, inhaling ragged but steadfast. His perspiration smelt of engine oil and something nightmarish, like the fear-sweat April had woken up to from her wild dreams that afternoon. 

“Hold it,” she demanded, and then yanked once, twice and two times more until the bone straightened, slipping back within the muscle it'd come from. 

Male grunts - strained and wet with spit - transported her back in time. A desperate emotion guided her hands. No time to be kind or gentle - no time for bedside manner or sympathy. No time.

Splintering sounds, moistened by meat, echoed in her ears and while he didn't scream, the timbre of his breathing took on a desperate, watery edge. April made sure to keep her ears open for the click of bone, easier this time around because of the lack of screams. The music from the record player helped her focus as she twisted and searched, looking for that little snag. 

Seconds in, and she heard it - bone bumped bone and, it was with that dry click, that the man made the softest exhale April had ever heard. A displacement of air as the bomb dislodged and fell...

She looked up, holding still as his eyelids fluttered, pinprick-pupils staring into nothingness. For a second she thought he'd gone under, but his throat bob and she saw the barest of nods to keep going. 

It only took a few seconds maneuvering the edges together until they sat flush inside the cocoon of stiff muscle and snug tendon, and with that, the worst was over. 

"You did good, mystery man," she told him as she ankled her pully table around to brace his arm over a soft folded towel. 

April laid a damp rag around his bare neck, watching the look of relief lessen a few wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Sweat and drool ran down the etched lines of his face where it pooled forth from the gnash of his teeth on leather, becoming a wet coating that slid slowly down his throat to the center of his chest. Despite her assumption, the fluids he released were tame compared to what usually happened with pain of this magnitude.

“Hold still, alright? You did great,” she whispered, praising him again despite herself, all calm and reassuring. A light sheen of perspiration covered her upper lip and forehead as she caught her own breath. Setting bones was stressful work, and unfortunately, it was fifty/fifty odds he’d need it re-broken later.

She was peeling back the plastic wrap of a fresh dressing when the soft dislodge of teeth from leather pulled her attention backward. He was resting the indented belt on his thigh, breathing steadily with the slightest shake to his jaw. 

Under his breath, clogged with stifled pain, he said, “Thank you,” and left it at that. 

Though he said nothing more as she set up the rest of the gauze and sterile water, his eyes bore into her.

April found herself blushing. It was odd, considering she wasn’t dumb enough or young enough to get wrapped up in the romantic nature of nurse and patient status quo anymore. She knew better, but as she laid out the wrappings and splint rods beside him, the way he looked left her feeling strangely excited. The feeling wouldn't last. Not through the stitches at least, or so she thought.

Even with too little lidocaine left, he took each stitch with a thin expression, never taking his eyes off her face - not even bothering to watch her fingers as she did her needlework on his flesh.

He kept silent as she filled the suddenly uncomfortable silence with a recap of what she was doing. 

Standing between his legs, she administered an injection of steroids, “After this, I’m going to give you a benzathine injection… it’ll stave off any bacteria we might have introduced into your system but the dressings will-”

“I know how to take it from this point,” he said, still sounding like he was talking around a ball of blood in his throat. 

April swallowed in reflex, taking care to wrap his arm from wrist to elbow despite the soft grunts he gave her in return. It was shameful - the way her cheeks burned under his relentless gaze. He didn’t comment as she pinched the tip of her tongue between her teeth, splinting the arm with thick watertight padding and hollow rods. 

Every necessary and unnecessary brush of contact left her searching for air - the movement of his thigh against her hip, brushing her thumb along the bone in his wrist as she laid wet casting over his arm and the unsubtle shift of her hips between his open knees. 

The casting material hardened fast, but there were still several minutes of squeezing the flexible mold, making certain it wasn’t too loose or too tight. Every minute waiting allowed for more grazing touches and heightened heart rates.

“Wiggle your fingers for me, please,” she asked, sounding breathless even to herself. 

His bloodied fingers twitched and made a loose fist around the material she’d webbed between his thumb and forefinger. 

“How does it feel?”

“You're shaking,” he replied instead, watching her with a nearly amused twist to his mouth but for all April knew her mind had painted the curve there itself. He didn't seem like a man who'd smile, then again... the smile wasn't a normal one in any sense of the word.

"Are you frightened?"

Yes, she nearly gasped but pressed it down for a resolute expression instead. The unrelenting eye contact was unsettling, but it was what he said next that troubled her the most.

"Do you use a gun, or something blunt when the men come for you?" there was no mistaking it then, he was smiling - a bastardized type of smile. A wolfish one.

April nodded, "A gun. I have a Winchester."

"But you don't carry it on you," he noted, sounding disappointed but not concerned. April felt her heart racing as fast as it had when the phone first rang, back when she was asleep and prey, and she didn't know this mystery man sitting on her kitchen table.

His voice rattled like heavy wind through thick oak trees when he told her, "Is this where you really belong? What you're doing for those men, day by day... what you let them do. Will you keep doing it?"

April felt her eyes burn evenly, felt trapped between his knees and in his sight, and as her lips trembled, she reached up to the bruised eye socket.

"No-no," she admitted, biting to tongue keep from spilling what was best unacknowledged, "I won't be able to." She licked her lips, trying to stop all the bad memories from clouding the good one speckled between. Life hadn't been all bad... but life had to end at some point.

He watched her as she stroked the tender hematoma under her eye, looking at it like she'd seen people decode paintings.

April ignored the strange air between them - ignored the hot breath he wafted down her open collar and ignored, as best she could, the slight bulge between his thighs she couldn’t help but notice when she leaned over to toss the empty syringes in the trash bin. That reaction was typical enough after an enormous amount of pain to not to take seriously… though it had been awhile since she’d witnessed it and never alone with the man in question. 

His legs twitched, bumping around her hips. Subtle, but noticeable. 

More excitement surged in her stomach, lingering like weak adrenaline but the more he stared and the more she stood between his legs, the more she realized none of it mattered.

“... you should wait here for a few more hours,” she told him, letting the unmasked insinuation in her voice go where it wanted. 

He eyed her, still doped but not enough to add any moral baggage to her free offer, at least not on her end. Knowing the type of man that needed an underground ‘surgeon’, he wasn’t a good soul, and she’d stopped believing she was better than the average person a long time ago.

Life was too short to concern herself with the history of someone like him. Tomorrow, a week from now… a year or less and she could be six-feet under, so why care? After all the terrible things she’d witnessed in Nam and the years after, it was almost funny that a brain tumor would be what put things in perspective for her.

Watching the way his eyes absorbed her, April dared lay a palm on his bare chest and told him with careful firmness, “It’ll be hard in a few minutes, and I’ll be gentle.” 

Her lips screwed down at the double meaning, yet he was already harder than the drying cast on his arm, and the mild joke dismantled a little of the tense atmosphere. A necessary slip.

“Anton,” he rasped, moving against her planted hand in action.

April felt a wave of fear grip her; pull in her stomach as he plucked her elbow up in one hot fist. She took a step back as he got to his feet, wavering only an inch before he stilled, standing steady as an elm tree. Even the way his eyes roamed her seemed calculated - not a single calorie burned without purpose.

Anton, she thought. A first name? - she almost smiled, but there were too many conflicting emotions in her to smile as if she weren’t nervous. 

"April," she gave him. 

With a short nod, she led him - his fingers iron brands around her elbow - to her dim bedroom. The scattering rays of the high sun from before were as red as refracting blood now, rippling like waves over the carpet and soon they’d be gone completely. 

The clock on her bedside table read seven-twenty only three hours from when he'd awoken her.

Anton sat on the edge of the bed with a hard breath, chest rumbling as he stared, unblinking and tugged her down - down to the floor on her knees. 

The rattling of her heartbeat brokered a light sweat over her skin; pulling around her vocal cords until all that came off her tongue was a pathetic moan. He went for his belt buckle one handed, roaming hot looks over her until they lingered like physical things. 

Presumptuous of him, she thought for a second before his plush lips parted, “Can you remove my boots?” and then, as if remembering his manners, added, “please…” to the tail end of his request.

April tugged the expensive boots off his feet and tried to lift his ankles over the edge of the bed, but he resisted, wrapping that hand of his around her waist and then taking up the heft of her naked thigh. It struck her then, and only now that he was in her bed, that his hands were larger than she’d registered before and that she was about to do this... this incredibly intimate act with a hired killer. 

He was huge - so much larger than her and it was only now, as his palm squeezed the meat of her thigh, that she fully understood the danger she’d put herself in. Watching him finger the button on her jean shorts open - zipper being jerked down - ran the further realization home. It frightened her, but to say it didn’t excite her would be a lie. That simmering arousal she’d not felt in so long, was growing, getting heavier and more potent the louder his breathing became.

This wasn't supposed to be a thing she was capable of. 

She’d never thought to fuck one of her patients, no matter how seedy the setting was or how she felt after the process was finished. But there was no point in ignoring the desire - not when he didn’t seem to mind, and there was no time left for her to either.

April stood between Anton's spread thighs as he shoved four fingers inside the open hem of her shorts. She laid her hands on his shoulders and gave the warm skin a grounding squeeze, enjoying the strange level of safety she felt being so close. Groans, male and robust, twisted that ache tighter. He shucked the worn denim down her hips, wrangling them past the width of her outer thighs and down her knees where she kicked them off with a small huff. Frantic energy strangled her then - making her fingers do brainless things like wrap around his throat, disappear inside the blood-gummed strands of his hair, and it made her kiss him as though it were an appropriate thing to do.

“... sorry,” she gasped as he jerked her away; palm laid over her sternum and thumb on the divot in her throat. Sorry, she was, though April tried again moments later, lips parted but it was his teeth she got instead. The blood she tasted was from the split on his lip, but given the harsh nature of his ‘kiss,' it could have been her own for all she knew.

Even though she was weak compared to him, small and thin, he lifted his legs when she urged them over onto the bed until he was flat on his back. Teeth still in her lower lip and a hot tongue sweeping over the abused flesh, April lifted a knee and swung it over his hips. A sound, so similar to the grunt of pain she’d heard earlier, escaped his throat, but it wasn’t from the pain…

Clinically, keeping her breathing calm and even, April undid the button on his jeans, feeling the clink of metal in her ears like a needle poke. 

If she regretted this, at least she wouldn't for long. 

“Do you do this often?” Anton asked against her mouth, sounding less accusing than he did curious as she tugged open the front of his jeans to the tune of his unhinged gasp. The blood-dried folds exposed more dusky skin and trailing dark hair. Pausing, fingers laid over the hem of his briefs, she stared into the blank distance between his bare stomach and hidden cock, chewing on a response. 

“... if I did, would it matter?”

“Yes,” he said, but reached down to shove aside the hem of his underwear regardless. His silky cock bobbed free of the fabric, resting strenuously over his tense stomach. There wasn’t much need for a condom, at least not the way she saw it, but April reached over and took one from her bedside table anyway. It was for his peace of mind rather than her own. 

Covering him up was methodical, almost boring until his fist coiled in the slack of her shirt, yanking her forward and urging her down in his lap. If he were able to manhandle her this easily with one hand… she shuddered to think what damage he could do with both. For a flash of time, she looked up at him and saw the wolf - teeth bared and blood swimming around his gums - but he was just a man, even if a dangerous one at that. 

A man, and nothing more...

April reached down with her lips and stole a kiss, avoiding another bite as her slippery cunt slid and pressed his coated cock into his belly. She fumbled with the buttons on her blouse, distracted by the torpid slide of his lips, as the cool air hit her bare breasts. His hips rolled, purposeful and demanding. Anton shoved his cock along her inner thigh - the thick girth branding - before April wrapped a few fingers around him, lifted her hips and sunk down. 

She whined, planting a fist on the bed beside his neck as the bulbous head of his cock popped through stagnant muscle. That initial slide - frictionless and tight - hurt. It hurt like it had the first time all those years ago, but this wasn’t the night of sixty’five in the backseat of a pickup, and Anton did not give her the time she needed to adjust…

… but that was alright. It was better this way. 

Fuck the pain away, she thought, hissing with each breath as his hand gripped her waist like a vice and his hips slammed upwards; pace slow and solid. The audible sound of damp skin slapping together echoed over the music from the living room and somewhere she heard herself gasping, growing louder and less composed with each thrust. 

Her breasts bounced on her chest, making her nipples tingle with the motion. April felt him there, at the very back of her, pounding away at that spot that was making her stomach pull in something too refreshing to be pain. Some bastard blend of discomfort and pleasure swelled and grew. 

Through a cloud of unshed tears, she saw him again - the wolf with teeth on display and laid a hand around her throat as if to steel herself from a bite, but the pound of cock and the bruises growing under his hand was too much. Her stomach curled, tits slapping her ribs and pressed both hands against his chest, bracing herself.

“Oh…” she let slip, and then again and again and another but this time louder. More high, clipped vowels punctured her lungs, spilling from her mouth. 

April lowered her lashes, looking at the wolf from her nightmares and slapped her rear inside the hollow of his hips, impaling herself; driving the mixed sensations into a deafening ache that hurt more than it did anything else. 

Her patient, Anton, the evil man underneath her, fucking her, braced his heels in the bed and filled some part inside her that didn't need filling. The pain imploded, running hot and oh so sweet until April couldn't tell if she were begging him to stop or fuck her all the harder - it must have been the latter because Anton snarled like a beast in response. He rammed his cock until the muscles under her hot palms were as solid as steel and the headboard began to bang against the wall.

‘Quiet down, you whore!’ 

The scratchy old voice tried to insult her through the wall. Mrs. Krakowski slapped her cane on April’s wall, but the man beneath her kept going, faster and deeper and with renewed purpose until her throat was tearing under her ragged screeches and groans. 

April’s eyes rolled back in her head - the darkness coming. 

She trembled, furiously searching out her inflamed clit until the nerve bounced under her fingers and she was so… so close…

The meticulous, steady pounding of his cock faltered, and just on the edge of coming, April felt his cock twitch. That vibrating groan - so much louder than the sounds he'd made when she'd shoved his bone back in - ran through the walls, stopping her neighbors relentless, slamming cane.

Muffled insults quieted through the wall until all she could hear was the panting of his breath and her own whimpering as she started tasted the begins of the end.

“... please,” she muttered, fingering her clit as she rocked her hips in his lap, milking him until the solid girth inside began to soften, but it didn't matter because she was coming. 

Her climax came on like oozing molasses; thick, coiling her innards until that pronounced spot he'd bruised inside was quivering, Raw muscles clenched all along the half-flaccid cock inside. April felt her head spin - the world fall away into nothingness while her peak came, lingered and subsided. 

While her breasts tingled from the friction, she welcomed the unromantic, but perfect touch of his thumb under one puffy nipple. The spot where his hand had been on her hip pounded, not unlike the aftermath of a brawl and when she next opened her eyes to him it wasn't the wolf she saw anymore. 

He watched her, skin slick with sweat and a faint edge to his eyes that hadn't been there before. Side effects of the loods - sedative effects kicking in, she thought and then smirked… or the consequences of the orgasm in conjunction with the drugs. Either way, the man deserved some sleep after everything. 

April had cleaning up to do and matters to handle before the night was through and the rough fucking and climax had helped put most things in perspective. 

“Thank you,” she told him honestly, sitting up enough for his cock to slip out of her. His brows pinched, breath gushing through his lightly pursed lips, at the motion. When he made to get up, she rested her hand on his chest, gently urging him back down. He laid back, watching her like a wolf would a potential threat… maybe the way it would a lone deer as well. 

He said not a word as she removed the full condom, tying it off and wiping his stomach and cock down with a moist towel. 

Anton observed the way she fasted his jeans back, slipping his belt free to leave it on the side of the bed. Under anyone else's eyes, she'd have thought they were judging her, but there was something in those blacks that made her feel proud. What that was in his gaze that made her feel so, she wasn't sure and of course… it didn't matter. 

“I've got some calls to make and stuff to put away,” she told him after pulling on a high waisted skirt and a loose tank top, “those quaaludes will wear off in an hour from now, but my advice is that you sleep until the morning… I've got a box of spare clothes when you're ready for them.”

The silence made her pause - made her turn around with her fingers running through the ends of her hair. Anton stared at her, an arm bent behind his head and the cast resting over his naked hip. He looked relaxed but ready - a thing that made her home feel safe in a way it hadn't in so long. 

His tongue ran over the plush of his lower lip before he spoke, “Don't make any needless calls, you understand me?” 

His lips screwed together, brows lifting as if she were some child that needed reminding of the rules as opposed to the woman he just fucked. April glared around a mess of hair, forcing a smile that said she knew the rules and that he knew them too and that this whole conversation, if one could call it that, was pointless. 

She left the door cracked, and the bedside lamp on but took her Winchester and unopened mail, trying to remove the memory of the wolf’s head snarling as his cock stabbed deep within. 

Cleaning up the mess from his procedure calmed her racing thoughts and the soft ache and renewed bliss as she walked helped soothe the jitters. 

At around midnight, April sat at her kitchen table, bare wood framing the unopened letter with her name, address, and St. Helen's Hospital stamped in the corner. 

Nothing but silence came from her bedroom - nothing but a quiet acceptance in her chest and with a kitchen knife, she tore open the letter; breath trapped in her throat. 

Negative. 

Clear - not inconclusive, but a resounding no. April sat at the table, clutching the letter in her hands and felt herself falling to pieces. 

She must have walked herself to her sofa, in a daze, with the letter clutched in her hand. That night she dreamt of the wolves again, feasting on a deer - it's small mouth weeping bloody bubbles as its eyes glazed over with pain and then death. April felt her stomach pull and gurgle as the wolves nuzzled the open flaps of drenched fur, ripping out soft tissue and purple ropes of intestine. 

The morning came with a click of her front door. She could smell her hand soap in the air and the lingering musk of a man. 

“Anton,” she whispered, clutching her fists only to miss the crinkle of the letter - the letter that was now resting flat on her coffee table. 

Even at an angle, she could see fresh pen marks written down on the edge of the paper. It was an address, a date and a time for a phone booth on the outskirts of town. Four days from now in the early hours of the morning. 

His invasion of her privacy felt deliberate, as if it was some payback for a slight she'd committed. No doubt he'd read her letter, but it didn't explain why he’d left instructions behind. She thought about ripping it up - she thought to burn it over the stove or let it get lost with the pointless medical bills in the trash bin, but instead, she let it sit on her coffee table for four days…

In a phone booth, during a bleak summer morning, April held the letter in her hand, reading it over and over as the phone rang and rang and still… she wasn't sure if she should answer it…

She had all the time in the world now… all the time in the world… and no idea how to spend it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and thank you to the anon for the request. It was fun trying to work with a character as complex and mysterious as Anton (I know there have been many character studies done on what his true motives are and his allusions to the figure of Death). If you have the time, please leave me a comment letting me know what worked and/or what didn't. As always, all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Thank you to Darth Fucamus for making sure there were no glaring issues to be found in this one. <3
> 
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